51 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Website Or Blog

51 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Website Or Blog

Want to know how to get more traffic to your website?

The goals of every website are maximizing traffic and monetization. You may want to change the world, uplift humanity or make people laugh, but ultimately to do any of those things you need folks to actually come to your site.  The best written copy in the galaxy is for naught if 3 people see it and none of them comment or share it with others. With that in mind I humbly offer up 51 ways to get more traffic to your website.

What’s Inside Counts! That’s right friends, what you publish matters. The content posted on your site needs to be strong. It should be clearly written, relevant to your audience, and contain value for the readers. Value is experienced as useful and interesting information whose quality encourages sharing.

1. Post regularly. If readers see the same information all week long, they may not come back! use a tool like bufferapp to schedule posts across social media platforms

2. Be Bold. Write about current events, trending topics and by all means embrace controversy.  Keep yourself current by subscribing to feeds from news sites like Al Jazeera America

3. Interview a subject matter expert and learn how to get the best content from them

4. Make your article a “listicle” Top 10’s, Best Of’s, even Most Annoying.

5. Write provocative headlines . Here is a handy set of tips to create compelling language.

6. Embrace Your Social Side. Be sure to cross promote posts. Here is a great guide on cross promotion.

7. Join a blogging community so you know what topics are hot and can start to make connections with other writers

8. Use social sharing icons.  Make it easy for user to share your posts. This is a quick tutorial on how to add icons.

9. Respond. If someone takes the time to post a comment, take a moment and say thanks! It’s that easy, and creates engagement. Here are some suggestions for how to respond by Jeremy Myers

10. Use Linkedin to your advantage.  Link posts from your Linkedin page to Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.

11. Guest Blogging. Inquire with sites you read about becoming a guest blogger for them. Follow up by writing a thoughtful, inspiring or provocative piece. The quality of your post helps establish your reputation.

12. Place a link to your site in your email signature. Think of the hundreds of times a day you could be promoting your blog, simply by answering emails!

13. Write a press release about your site, and link to it in the body of the release. Not sure how to write a press release? Here is an excellent resource.

14. Syndicate your blog. Syndicate content for free on SlideShare WikiHow or HubPages

15. Size Matters. Write succinct posts and longer comprehensive articles. The combination of the two will make your site readable, and the detailed posts may be bookmarked for future reference by users. Seth Godin is the king of succinct posts and offers some useful advice on his blog.

16. Love That SEO. Set your keywords, and use long tail keywords  throughout the article. If you’re new to SEO and have questions about how to best utilize it check out this helpful guide

17. Title images with relevant keywords that appear in your article

18. Optimize your site for ALL search engines with this simple tutorial

19. Use Multimedia.  Get and keep user attention on your website with infographics, images, videos and podcasts

20. Create a sense of community. One easy way to do this is by creating a comments section below every post. Other tactics include ending posts with a question and posting inspirational content that will engage users emotions.

21. Answer a HARO request. There is such a thing as free publicity, and here it is!

22. Create a Facebook page that promotes your website or blog.

23. Run a contest or promotion to give away a prize. Source your prize for free by offering publicity to the retailer or site who provides it.

24. Create an opt-in form on your  site, then you have permission to send your users a newsletter.

25. Write an e-book. Offer it for free on Amazon Kindle. Place your web address is in the first page of the book so it shows up in the “sample” section.

26. Participate in affiliate marketing. Learn the basics of effective affiliate campaigns here 

27. Write a report that you make available to users at no charge if they post tweet or share your site info on social media

28. Use a tool such as Pingomatic to to let search engines know you have made an update to your site.

29. Print your website URL on your business card and v-card

30. Attend blogging conferences or meet up events run by bloggers in your community

31. Speak at events, and be sure to name check your website or blog generously.

32. Enter a blogging competition generally these events promote the blogs that participate, you can gain  some free coverage for your site in this way.

33. Choose a unique and great looking theme for your site or blog

34. Review products and contact the brand’s social media manager to let them know. You could get a link from their social media platform to your site.

35. Develop a search function for your blog or site

36. Do some research into what makes blogs successful. You’ll find many writers who share great tips with you.

37. Don’t Quit. Persistence is a key to success. Sites that stick around have the best chance of increasing traffic!

38. Ethical Link Building. There are a multitude of opportunities to insert links into your site, here are some ideas.

39. Use Google’s Keyword tools.  Google has some awesome free tools to hep you choose keywords. Take advantage of them.

40. Don’t try to outsmart the system. There are many ways to try and game the system, but the best ways to build authentic traffic to your site is to provide excellent content, and provide value to your users.

41. Decrease your bounce rate.  Search engines dislike high bounce rates. Use your keyword tools to check your percentages and work on the best choices possible to avoid the dreaded bounce.

42. Use Schema  Microdata. Are you wondering what that means? Here is your answer.

43. Take advantage of Google Analytics data. Install google analytics on your page and pay attention to the metrics. This is one of the simplest and most practical ways to make your page more relevant and gain traffic

44. Interview thought leaders. By posting expert content that features interviews with SME’s your site will gain organic search traffic.

45. Post a Yahoo Answer. Check out the questions on Yahoo’s ask section. Yahoo is the king of answering questions.  They key to driving traffic to your site is by offering up well researched relevant answers. Don’t go off the top of your head, unless you’re truly an expert in a topic.

46. Use Social Bookmarking. This is a simple solution that takes less than a minute to do. The key is having useful content that a community votes up!

47. Post in relevant forums. There are thousands of forums for every business and topic under the sun.  A quick search will reveal forums that match the topic covered by your site. Comment mindfully in forums and you establish yourself as an expert.

48. Market your articles.  You can use the tried and true method of marketing articles in directories like  Ezine and Article Base.

49. Write great titles for your articles. The best article of the year won’t be seen with a boring title.  Check out this headline generating resource to up your headline writing game.

50. Turn your sprint into a marathon. One great article can spike website traffic in a significant way. Sustaining that momentum can be helped by asking users to opt in to an email list. By putting opt ins on your sidebar and footer, you’ll make sure no one misses the opportunity to get more of the great information just consumed.

51. Love what you do. If you genuinely have passion for the topic of your site or blog it shows. Readers respond to authenticity, so be the real thing!